


Blue iris

by Galacteddy



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hanahaki Disease, Light Angst, Multi, basically all the tagged ships are unrequited, only calliope/roxy is endgame, sorry lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 16:24:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10834926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galacteddy/pseuds/Galacteddy
Summary: It started on a day like any others. To be fair, you didn't even think it was going to be anything more than a normal cold. People don't think of zebras when they hear hooves. But in hindsight you should've. the symptoms were all there, your lungs felt heavy and every time you coughed it seemed like you had something stuck in your throat. Nobody asked and you didn't think better.





	Blue iris

**Author's Note:**

> Basically canonverse only Hanahaki exists. It's a modified prompt, so it's not really peak literature. Unbeta'd so errors may occur.

It started on a day like any others. To be fair, you didn't even think it was going to be anything more than a normal cold. People don't think of zebras when they hear hooves. But in hindsight you should've. the symptoms were all there, your lungs felt heavy and every time you coughed it seemed like you had something stuck in your throat. Nobody asked and you didn't think better.

The first time you cough up a petal, it's in your room while you're chatting with your friends over pesterchum. You had been coughing for a good minute when you felt something soft and silky finally come out of your throat and into your mouth. You spat it out and stared at it in disbelief. It had an odd shape, a pretty shade of blue fading into yellow and white in the middle. It curved backwards, and it was slightly wet with saliva.

You had tossed it out and tried to forget about it. You knew for whom the flower petals in your lungs were, but you preferred to ignore it. And you also decided to ignore the implications of you coughing up flower petals. You did look up blue flowers until you found one that seemed to be what the petal belonged to. Blue iris. Symbol of hope and faith, and you found that fitting.

It didn't take more than a week for your condition to get worse. What used to be two petals a day became handfuls, wracking cough fits that left you breathless and hazy, with blue flowers around you and all over your hands. It was beautifully tragic. Death by love. The kind of poetic ending you didn't deserve.

Almost a full month after the first petal, you're in the game, and Hal in an attempt to save your sorry ass had orchestrated everything to get Jake to become your boyfriend. The petals eased for few days, but they came back full force the first time you tried to hold his hand and he ran forward, seemingly excited by some rock. You coughed up almost a full flower that evening.

You're pretty good at hiding your feelings and stuff of the likes to your friends, it's what you've done your whole life. But big blue petals coming from your throat aren't that easy to hide. Roxy approaches you and asks you how long it's been going on. You tell her few months, and she shows you some pictures on her phone of yellow petals in what seems to be her own hand. You know hers were for you, but you didn't press. And she knew yours were for Jake, but she also didn't press. You sit side by side in silence for hours, after. 

It gets to a point where it's almost too hard to hide. There's whole flowers that get stuck into your throat at least once a day, accompanied by a little army of petals. You know that Jane knows too, because she looks at you with pity whenever you cough, and it makes your heart ache because you stole Jake from her, and it still didn't make your illness any better. You mouth "sorry" to her when you're not choking on your own feelings (literally) and she sighs. 

It's pretty hard when you go fighting monsters on your planet, because taking off your mask to cough up the flowers means you'll breath Krypton. It makes you even more light headed than the coughing fits did, and you almost faint more than once. When Jake comes to see if you're alright, completely oblivious to your condition, it makes you want to cough up not only the flowers but maybe a full bush. 

Hal reminds you every day that there's an easy way for you to get rid of it, to not have blue flowers obstruct your airflow daily and to suffer for no reason. You always refuse and tell him to fuck off, but when you're alone in your room, you actually think about it. It would be much easier. You're sure that Jake has no interest in you romantically, so there's really not much of a point in killing yourself over this. But then again, feeling love is one of the few things that still makes you feel more human than robot, so you shake your head and keep coughing blue irises.

It's been almost half a year since that first dreaded petal when the petals start coming up speckled with red. You're used to blood, but when you see the pretty blue stained with crimson, you really understand how bad it's gotten. How self-destructive it is to keep going like this, spending time daily with Jake and flashstepping away to cough up gardens. It's pitiful and every drop of blood makes you hate yourself more. 

In a way, being cornered by three of your sugar-high friends and forced into joining their crazed fuck happy party was what saved you from a death by Hanahaki. Breaking up with Jake had made you spit out enough flowers to make you feel sick. You didn't puke, and instead you stepped on the flowers and left smears of blue and red on the concrete of your rooftop. You don't really care about them, and you don't care about the fraction of second where Jake seemed hurt by your words. 

You think it must be because of your ascension to God Tier that the flowers stopped. It's an odd end for your Hanahaki. You didn't technically get it taken out, but your feelings for Jake disappeared the second you woke up on that purple slab dressed like a douchebag ballerina prince. You don't mention it to anyone, but secretly you're glad you can finally breathe with easy through a day. 

When Jake approaches you, right before you go through the door, he tells you he's sorry for making you cough up flowers. And he asks you if you meant it when you stepped on the petals. You don't know what to say, so you just tell him it's alright, and you would enjoy his friendship more than anything. It's not a lie, but it's also hiding from him that there's no way now that you'll ever have romantic feelings for him again. 

Roxy, again, is the most perceptive. She sits beside you on a sunny day when you came alone to the park. She asks about your flowers, and you ask her about hers. She tells you hers stopped when she started hanging out with Callie more. You tell her that ascending to God Tier took care of yours. She nods and asks you if you're sad. You tell her you haven't felt better in years. And it's true. 

You look up at the sky, note that it's the same pale indigo as the petals you used to cough up, and decide you don't really like that shade of blue.


End file.
